Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Today I will be sharing with you this beautiful Paris necklace that I made. It had been a little while since I had made jewelry and it felt good to do so again... especially since this is a gift! (Shhh...)

I was lucky enough to be sent this box jammed packed with Mod Podge supplies from the folks over at Plaid. Look at all those goodies!

For this project I used the new Podgeable Shapes (available at Michael's) to make the charms for the necklace. (About half the shapes have holes to be used as charms.) It couldn't have been easier.

Other new products from Plaid include these great papers. Many of the designs are the exact sizes of the shapes, which makes it even easier. If you look closely you can see where I have set 4 of the charms on the papers to determine what I like best.

If you want your charm to show a design that isn't the size of the charm, you can use these handy stencils to trace the shape on the paper. (This photos shows a few punched out so you can see how they work. )I used the stencils on all the charms except the blue rectangle charm because it was the only one that was the exact size.

To attach the paper to the shapes you simple coat the paper with a layer of Mod Podge and stick it to the shape. Make sure it is centered and that there are no bubbles (no photos of this because it was hard to hold the camera and apply the Mod Podge at the same time but it's very simple).

Next I had to figure out my design.

I played with several different chains, but this was an easy choice. The hard part came in choosing the embellishments. I quickly narrowed it down to pearls, but what color??? I liked the white because they stood out...

But I liked the bronze because they helped the charms stand out. In the end I chose the bronze pearls and assembled the necklace. Use jump rings to attach the charms, and head pins to attach the pearls. (If you need help with these steps check out my "Jewelry Basics" tutorials.)

And voila! My beautiful Paris statement necklace is complete. When I attached the charms there was a lot of space in between each one, so I went with two pearls in each space.

Here's a close up of some of the charms so you can see the the detail in the papers.

You can uses these shapes to customize any piece of jewelry with any paper. Ooh! Or how about photos? That would make a cute gift for a grandma- photos of the grandkids? The possibilities are endless!

Hi! I'm Aubree. I didn't learn that I was creative until my early twenties which was a real detriment to my teenage years. I started this blog to explore my creativity and help others discover their own. Welcome!